Vanadium alloyed powder metallurgy (PM) tool steels have been on market for decades and attained a considerable interest because of the fact that they combine a high wear resistance with an excellent dimensional stability and because they have a good toughness. These steels have a wide rang of applications such as for knives, punches and dies for blanking, piercing and cold extrusion. The steels are produced by powder metallurgy. The basic steel composition is firstly atomized and thereafter the powder is filled into a capsule and subjected to hot isostatic pressing (HIP) in order to produce an isotropic steel. The performance of the steels tends to increase with increasing content of vanadium. A high performance steel produced in this way is CPM®10V. It has high carbon and vanadium contents as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,249,945. Another steel of this kind is disclosed in EP 1 382 704 A1.
Although the known (PM) steel has a higher toughness than conventionally produced tool steels, there is a need for further improvements in order to reduce the risk for tool breakage, such as chipping and fracture and to further improve the machinability. Until now the standard measure to counteract chipping is to reduce the hardness of the tool.